


Two Halves in a Head

by Morphologist



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Also instead of the DPD, Connor and Nines are dissociated selves, Connor and Nines share a body basically, Cyberlife has a slightly different goal and history than in canon, Cyberpunk AU, Cyborg Connor & Nines, Gavin is looking for his missing brother Elijah, Gen, Genetic Engineering, Human AU, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Torture, Jericho side plots including how they escaped Cyberlife, M/M, Multi, Other, POV Alternating, Protective Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Protective Upgraded Connor | RK900, Rk800-60 is also in this... more on that later, Survivor Guilt, Their original name was neither Connor nor Nines, Unreliable Narrator, cloning, everyone works as Hitmen, in a dystopian cyberpunk Detroit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:07:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23799760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morphologist/pseuds/Morphologist
Summary: Connor and Nines are what is left of a person named Conrad. When Conrad was a young boy, he was kidnapped and turned into the personal experiment of a cybernetic researcher with numerous ill intentions. Connor and Nines are very close, and though they deeply care for one another, sharing a body isn't easy. Imagine having a roommate in your head at all times, and naturally there are compromises, disagreements, debates, and periods of agitated silence. But more than anything, there is a sense of reconnection. Communication is essential to living a shared life, especially when they struggle with their past traumas in very different ways. After escaping captivity, they turn to the underworld of cyberpunk Detroit, and join an agency of hitmen that work for the FBI. It's a part of the security force that no one wants to admit is there. They fit right into its secretive operations and become a highly respected agent in the field. Their past continues to haunt them as they try to come to terms with it. (I will try to keep updates consistent)
Relationships: Connor & Upgraded Connor | RK900, Hank Anderson & Connor, Markus/Simon (Detroit: Become Human), Upgraded Connor | RK900/Gavin Reed, it's kind of ambiguous what their relationship is here
Comments: 11
Kudos: 32





	1. Chapter 1

_The boy in the basement just turned twelve two days ago, though he doesn't know it, for time has no meaning here. He has been living in captivity for almost two years, but it feels far longer for he barely remembers his life before this. His body is riddled with implants, and a diode thrums red and yellow on the side of his head. His skin is pallid, ashen. One eye bandaged shut with gauze. The other, bright, brown, and cautious, stares wide open at the slit of light emanating from under the door at the top of the stairs. His plain white t-shirt and shorts are dirty, threadbare, tattered. The humid, stinking air, is suffocating. Darkened spots blossom along his arms as well as cuts that were never attended. Wires run in and out of numerous patches of skin. Stitches over stitches. Stitches he clawed open, dried and itching. He huddles against the wall in the darkness. He rocks forward and back, muttering to himself..._

Nines held Connor in his arms, as he listens to the rain pattering endlessly outside. 

But all he can do is stare at the light under the door. Any moment now, he knows he will see a shadow on the other side of it.

Connor buries his face in Nines’ shoulder, feeling his warmth, trying so hard to drown out the terrified voices in his head.

“ No one’s coming for us... it's never happening, Nines. We're never getting out of here...” Connor exhaled shakily. 

“ You have me.” Nines replied quietly, squeezing Connor’s shoulder.

“ You’re not even really here.”

“ I know. I know, but…” Nines fought to keep his own tears back.

What kind of life would await them outside anyway? After all of this?

Connor kissed the scar on Nines’ neck and he pulled away slightly, only for Connor to cling even harder to him.

“ Ssshh, sshh, I’m ok.” Nines replied, touching his forehead to Connor’s.

“ No, you’re not. You’re just like me.”

“ We’ll get out of here, Con. There’s a whole world out there, you know. It’s waiting for us. We just have to hold out a little while longer.”

“ I don’t think I can take it anymore…”

The silence dragged on between them, their cold, shivering forms nestled together against the wall, clad in the same tattered t-shirt, and the same tattered shorts.

They both knew there was no going back. No going back to one person.

And that's a wicked, shameful thing to Connor. But Nines knows deep down that this is what has kept them alive this long. 

Their minds are at once whole and separate and distinct, and that is a curse and a solace.

There was a knock on the door.

Connor flinched, a sharp strangled sound escaped his chest and he covered his face.

“ Go to sleep, Con. I’ll handle this.” Nines whispered in his ear.

“ No, no, no, no-“

“ Let me handle this.” Nines said. And he felt his heart shattering as Connor began to tear up against him. 

“ No, it’s not right-“

“ I’ll be fine.”

“ No, stop pushing me away, it's not right-"

" Just close your eyes. This will be over before you know it. Please." Nines gripped Connor’s wrist, and suddenly darkness closes in on Connor like a haze of claws, pulling at the seams of their small little world, severing him from the space they share. 

The door creaks slowly open. 

The shadow sees only one boy in the room. The one it put there. 

Nines looks up with quiet, impassive, coldness.

Nines has done this before.

But this time his plans are different.

This time he has no intention of playing along with the shadow. It’s been too many times. Connor fades every day in the face of this shame, anger, and guilt. Not to mention the child that faded away even before him. Nines is ready to risk his life again, if only to delay the inevitable.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hank Anderson is a twenty five year old cadet with an eccentric lieutenant and a new set of investigations on his plate.  
> There's gonna be a bunch of new terms in this chapter and sorry if it comes off as kinda expository! things are gonna start moving faster from here...

“ Lieutenant Maxwell? Cadet Anderson? I need to speak to you guys!” Captain Fowler barks. The boss of the Detroit Police Department stands with his arms folded in the doorway of his office. He’s young for his position, mid-thirties, but he means business.

Hank Anderson pauses in the middle of typing a report. He looks up from his cluttered desk, a tuft of ash blonde hair hanging over his tired blue eyes. His grizzled older partner, Lieutenant Josiah Maxwell, quirks an eyebrow at Fowler’s door hanging ajar on the other side of the open work space that is the heart of the DPD. 

Maxwell winks at Hank, still leaning back in his chair, boots casually propped up on his desk. “ Sounds like a new case.” he says. The snake tattoo on the right side of his face writhes with the upward curve of his lips. The snake is an unusual cover for the jagged scar that starts at his right ear and ends at his mouth. It’s been three months since Hank’s initiation into the DPD, and Maxwell gives him a different story about how he got that scar, every single week. And every week the story gets more absurd. It goes from “ I accidentally nicked my face with a butter knife” to “my cat Cleopatra clawed me _real bad_ one day” to “that’s what happens when you sharpen a chopstick and try to use it on a dartboard, damn thing does a number on ya”. Anyone can tell the scar is deep, clearly a serious wound that could have cost him a whole cheekbone. Hank feels like a fool for even wondering where he got it from, because Maxwell can turn just about anything into a jest, even the morbid things.

“ Got it.” Lieutenant Maxwell drawls, exiting his case file, and hopping to his feet. Hank follows quickly behind. Hank can’t tell whether their boss is planning to grill them for a minor mistake or commend them for something. It’s all up in the air, based on Fowler’s mood on any given day. Hank has been in here at least three times a week since joining the force, whether it be for a frank critique on how he handled a case or an interrogation, or something minor like if he was the guy who fucked up the communal coffee machine.

Fowler’s office is a cube of obscuring glass with a wall of shelves behind his steel desk. The room is pitch black from the outside but from the inside he can see everyone in the rest of the workspace. It’s a bit like walking into an interrogation room, and Hank tries to ignore the chill he gets every time he walks in. 

“ What’s up? New case?” Maxwell asked, sitting down across from Fowler.

Fowler hands him a thick stack of files, “ Well, a little more than that.”

Maxwell takes them and his eyebrows crinkle a little with surprise but he doesn’t say anything, just starts reviewing the files curiously. 

“ How many… um, I thought I was to start out with ten… active cases the first month? I have…” Hank began hesitantly. 

“ Twelve, yes. Well it’s a little busier right now than I’d hoped.” Fowler sighed, “ And clearly you’ve got an aptitude for spotting patterns, greenie. Which is why I’m putting you guys on a very specific thread of investigations.”

Hank looked through one folder, then the next. Images of bodies assailed his eyes in no particular order. Not bloody exactly, but distorted. Not butchered utterly. But instead, pulled apart in various ways, and then put back together. He felt like he was looking at surgical cadavers, or lab specimens. Two artificial forearms attached to the bloody elbow of an emaciated young man, a young woman missing her entire ribcage save for a collection of strange tubes snaking in and out of the flesh, more and more images assail him and each is different from the last. Each one has a different point of disgusting “repair”, like whoever did this wasn’t satisfied with the way they were before and tried to make something else of them, only to destroy their subject, sometimes through a severed bundle of vital nerves or blood loss from poorly amputated parts. Throughout the morass of pale carcasses is the common presence of obscure implants, cybernetic alterations and replacements of pre-existing organic parts. 

“ These are more than dissections and experiments. They’ve been tampered with cybernetically. Some of them even have marks of other forms of abuse....” Hank said, more to himself than anyone else, “ But what the hell are they even trying to find? What are they trying to fix? It just looks like they cut open a bunch of people and then put them back together, trying to fix them for things that aren’t even wrong.”

“ As you know Skin Snatchers supply their catch to illegal cloning rings and to other buyers. Kidnapped children, kidnapped adults, etc, sold for a profit. The number of kidnappings has risen exponentially. From that we can infer that the number of buyers has too.”

“ Skin Snatchers.” Hank replied, “ Of course… been hearing stories about them since I was a kid…”

“ If your parents never told you to stay off the streets after midnight because of the Snatchers, then what the hell were they even _doing_?” Maxwell chuckled. 

_“Well my dad was drinking himself to death, but my grandfather wouldn’t shut up about them_ …” Hank thought to himself.

“ These are not crimes of passion. They’re crimes of curiosity. This mutilation is meticulous...” Hank said, ignoring Maxwell’s snide comment.

“ Well, that’s if you view curiosity and passion as two separate things.” Maxwell replied, “ And I think Flesh Threaders are probably damn excited about what they do.”

Hank never liked that term… Flesh Threaders… makes his skin crawl with the thought of what these people must have felt, having their skin peeled slowly away, injected with God knows what, forced to endure punishments not even the worst gangs in Detroit would enact on their rivals. Flesh Threaders are unlicensed engineers, lacking the credentials or having had their credentials taken away for vile acts like this. But Skin Snatchers sell to the highest bidder, and Flesh Threaders make big money for the few breakthroughs they make in the darker corners of this urban sprawl. 

Fowler senses Hank’s hesitation. He continues, addressing Hank’s concern, “ Implants and enhancements run the world these days. And well, so do the creators behind them. As you know, some smartasses have a monopoly on certain types of gear. My guess is we won’t get far just by looking at Installers and Tinkerers who have had their licenses revoked. A Flesh Threader can be anyone. An experienced doctor who still has their license. A street vendor who wants to find the next big breakthrough in ocular radar installation, without any true medical or hardware experience. I’ve caught Flesh Threaders before, and let me tell you, cadet… they can be the friendliest most average Joe you meet on the street, but they got a basement full of ‘projects’. Cloning rings are organized and composed of Flesh Threaders, but most Flesh Threaders work alone. Hate being seen, hate being known. But that’s gonna change if cloning rings start recruiting the loners. And evidence has been pointing to that lately. You can bet there will be one hell of a symbiotic relationship between those who like to experiment on folks to create new implants they can sell on the market, those who kidnap innocents to sell to any buyer, and those who use reproductive cloning to create a steady supply of… people for Threaders. We don’t know nearly enough about how these three units work together, but that’s what I need you guys to figure out. Find the perpetrators, grill them, figure out who is supplying who and how deeply this runs.”

“ Yeah, uh-huh, 100%, boss.” Maxwell replies gruffly, “Just seeing how far Flesh Threaders have come in the last five years makes me want to shank one myself. Just stick one of em with my machete to give them a taste of their own medicine.”

“ Maxwell.” Fowler groaned. 

“ Jesus, these victims… there aren’t even identifications for half of them.” Hank said quietly, flipping between the pictures. A woman is missing both of her forearms, yet they are attached to a device funneling blood into her limp, lifeless body, as if the perpetrator wanted to see how long he could keep her alive that way. A young man lies with his pelvis cut open, gears and wires sticking out from his nether parts, snaking into a number of devices around his legs. Then there were… the children. Most… most were actually…

“ As you can see, cadet.” Fowler sighed, nodding at the page Hank froze the longest on, “Flesh Threaders do pay a high price for younger subjects. Because of their uh… neuroplasticity."

Hank inhales slowly and flips past the images of the dismantled children.

Mostly it was neighbors and acquaintances that called the authorities on the account of simply “suspicious activity”. There were many names on file, all of suspected Skin Snatchers, but only few of them are behind bars. The rest are still at large. Shabby apartments in mid-town, basements of beautiful suburban homes, shacks in the slums of south Detroit… there is no one type of demographic in which these victims are found. The thing the victims have most in common is, no official registration in any records (possibly meaning they were raised in cloning facilities), and out of those who are registered, they are destitute folks with very few living connections. Socially disconnected.

“ I would advise looking into missing persons cases going back at least a decade, maybe even two decades. Threader activity spiked after therapeutic cloning technology became available on the dark web. And things have gone haywire since. You will need to keep your eyes out on any ties to cold cases.”

Hank is still learning to hold down the small bite of nausea at the sight of victims. Last week, he saw his first body on the job. Frozen stiff in a snowbank in the suburbs, skin purpled and preserved in the cold, blood dried but still red. It is a different experience entirely, seeing the dead up close than it is just through a photo or a book or a holographic display. And also eerie in how _anticlimactic it is_ . A frozen corpse, face down from a gunshot wound to the back of the head. Hank isn’t a stranger to death, but it still angers him, bothers him, makes his blood run cold when he sees something that used to be a _person_ up close. He supposes that is a good thing, that he feels some anxiety, fear, rage. He wonders when he will lose that nausea, when he will harden against it. If he ever will.

“ It’s going to take a while for you to read through the specifics on each one. Anyway, commit the names of the Threaders we have on file to memory, and-”

The Captain’s phone rings and he picks it up quickly. 

“ Yes?... Alright…. Alright, got it. I’m on it.”

He hangs up and springs into action, throwing on his jacket.

“ Just got a distress call from a squad on the east side. Possible Threader victim in a serious medical emergency, sounds like a kid. I need you two on that, stat. Officer Hidalgo’s sending the coordinates your way, get on it!”

Maxwell nods curtly and jumps to his feet, Hank following closely behind.

Hank tries to block out the images from the files in his arms, and realizes he can’t. 

So as he grabs his semi-automatic from the drawer and jams on his earpiece, turning on the radar signal of his watch to zone in on Hidalgo’s coordinates, he sees the pictures moving before his eyes. Disembodied, silent, and still calling for help. 

  
  



	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connor's and Nines' merged perspectives over their own escape. They're fragmented and scared, but they're free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry about the late update. This story has continued to simmer in my mind and though there was a long delay in getting to this third chapter, I'm not planning to drop the story any time soon. Thanks for leaving kudos and bookmarks- it means a lot!

Connor stumbles forward in the dark, the LED street lamps casting pale blue glows on the sidewalks.

Tall but derelict suburban houses loom from both sides of the street. The landscape has changed. But he can’t tell what’s going on. Everything’s blurry, hazy, and the ground swims beneath him. Pain radiates from the stab wound in his lower stomach, just as a needle feels like it’s digging into his skull from behind.

“ We need to get out of here before Sixty wakes up and find out what we did to him.” Nines’ voice echoes inside him, “ We need to get as far away from the Bad House as possible.”

“ What’s happening?” Connor choked, one hand clutching something sharp and metal, the other roaming frantically across the blood trickling from the gash. He wanders towards a lamp, and pulls away from it because the light is so much stronger than he’s used to. It stings his eyes, which have become so accustomed to the dark of a basement. He tries to run but the pain nearly brings him to his knees and he has to slow to a stagger again. 

“ Oh god, oh god, Nines, where are we going? Nines?” He feels like his legs are going to give out any second. 

“ Doesn’t matter where we’re going, as long as he can’t follow us. I’ll try to stop the bleeding.” Nines replies, and his hand tightens over the wound. The pain seems to dull just _slightly_. 

Connor suddenly starts laughing, and it’s strained and tight and he can’t seem to stop. 

“ Keep your voice down. Get away from the lights. He'll be able to see us from a distance if we keep moving directly under the lights.” Nines hisses.

“ Did we kill him? Is he going to put himself back together like last time?” Connor asks, wandering erratically now, staying out of outlines of lamplight every time he passes them, meandering into the darkened sidewalk, weaving in between hedges and through people's weed infested yards. Occasionally he grabs a chain link fence for support, or steadies himself against a tree, only for Nines to push him on. 

“ Don’t think about that right now, we have to find a place to hide.” Nines says. 

“ I don’t recognize this place. How long were we in the Bad House? Why can’t I remember this place? This isn't the same route we took last time we ran for it...”

“ I don’t know, Connor. I don’t _know_. Do you want me to take over completely again? I think we’ll move faster if I-”

“ No, no, no, not yet. No. Does Sixty know what we did?”

“ Don’t talk about Sixty. If you talk about Sixty while the body’s deteriorating, you will wake all of him up. Then we’ll be as good as dead.”

“ Why can’t we tell them about this?” Connor glances over his shoulder at the darkness behind him, breathing hard. Every single shadow looks like something out to get him. Eyes seem to be everywhere, waiting, judging, leering at him. 

“ Because Sixty is the least ready to face what happened.” Nines replies calmly, “ Sixty doesn’t know what we did yet.”

Connor trips and falls in his haste, scrapes up his knees but scrambles back to his feet. The fall hardly registers at all, Nines is suppressing their pain receptors as much as possible so that they can keep going. 

They reach the end of the block, which marks the top of the hill, and below them they see Detroit spread out like an eclectic tapestry. 

For a moment, time stands still. Connor aches all over, but he forgets everything, even the pain in his gut as the midnight wind buffets his face and brings a different kind of tear to his eyes. 

It’s… well, the truth is he hasn’t seen anything so beautiful in his entire life. It is vast and it's strange and it's _brilliant_. There was so much space to simply roam, to disappear into, and simply to perceive. It was far from isolated, cramped, and singular. It's like only something they ever conjured in the stories they told themselves at night. 

Look at this place. It existed beside them this whole time. And yet neither of them has seen it till now. 

But how could they know? From their locked room, from where they were imprisoned?

He could never imagine a sight like this. 

Lights flickering against the darkness, strings and zigzags of gold, complemented by flickers of neon. The outer ring is covered in a haze of smoke, the inner rings radiate, startlingly bright. To his aching eyes, the lights are so resplendent, that for a long moment he forgets to breathe. Nines holds his silence, likewise frozen with a curious surprise. 

Connor looks up at the sky, feels the wind rushing through his lungs, filling him to the brim with something strong, fearsome even. He feels lifted, further and further into the real, into what _should_ be, rather than what is. 

Nines doesn't understand Connor's feeling of freedom and elation. But the city is beautiful, and it’s different, and it means _safety_. 

The night drags on, and both of them suddenly feel more stable. Even as the blood drips from between their fingers as they clutch the wound which continues to flow. To Connor, the worst that could happen is losing every last drop he has left before they can find a safe place and some medical supplies. And he knows he won't give up without a fight this time. They've come too far to fail. To Nines, the worst that could happen _is_ to be found by what they left behind, and the blood is a pesky reminder that their body isn’t limitless and is most certainly still weak, malnourished, to some degree disabled. Neither of them register the bruises and cuts that riddle them from their fight, all attention focused on that one wound, the one they are sure could kill them...

They wander, as the whispers from Sixty begin to grow. 

Sixty, the one they dare not cast a gaze upon. Who usually only exists in theory, like a scary story you tell your children to keep them from getting up to trouble. 

The problem is, he's growing restless. 

Connor knows Sixty as a phantom that exists in theory, as something that lives in the shrouded parts of his mind. It causes the occasional short circuit, the occasional interruption to his stream of consciousness. But leaves very little traces of itself behind. 

Nines knows Sixty as… much _more_ than a ghost story.

Questions, hisses, hums, mumbles, begin to distract them. 

It sounds like something is peeling back the film between their closed ring of communication.

It feels filthy to them. Like a set of dirty fingers, scratching with cracked nails, trying to pry and weasel its way in to their bubble of shared thought. 

Connor shakes his head, breathing hard as he rounds a corner towards the mouth of the first district of slums. He doesn’t know what this place is called. The smells are confusing, the stink of city sewers and brackish water begin to snake into his nose. The thrumming of messenger drones pass overhead, and he finches at the foreign sound. Nines reassures him it's just a machine, artificial and not quite sentient. 

Sixty only grows more insistent. More insatiable...

There are people wandering here, some of them look like they haven’t eaten in days, disheveled and unkempt despite the gadgetry they carry and the occasional implant that adorns them. Cheap gadgetry and implants, unorthodox and certainly not legal. 

They’re starting to attract curious and concerned looks. 

Connor covers his ear with one hand as the whispers of the people around him start to compound with Sixty’s muffled chattering. 

“ You have to ignore him, Connor.” Nines said carefully, glancing this way and that at their surroundings, “ If you give in and let him take over, we might as well be dead already.”

“ We need… h-help…” Connor choked.

And some curious onlookers, sitting on the steps outside their hovels and cubicle homes, either put out their cigarettes ad quickly shut the door at the sight of him, as others start pointing him out, and calling to each other. 

“ I don’t like this- I don’t like this at all-” Connor thought he wanted someone to help him, but really, he is absolutely terrified that he’s being seen at all. What if someone pounces on him, starts hurting him again? He’s confused, and he’s just about ready to scream, his throat tight as a knot. Connor recedes, further and further away from the moment, further and further away from his hold on the body, as Sixty grows louder and louder, until Connor covers his face and shrieks.

The body collapses, crumpled and helpless onto the ground. And Connor is gone, goes completely into hiding from Sixty's myriad voices. 

Now only Nines is left with the noise, that wretched, furious, frightening cacophony of everything that Sixty _is_ , everything that could put them back at square one. 

Nines tries to get up, but the body keeps giving out and he falls. 

He tries to push himself up, the blood soaking now onto the damp asphalt, mixing with water from the gutters. He suddenly loses all the feeling that Connor carried with him, and he feels hollow. Now the pain spreads through him like a wave. He’s terrified that he’s lost Connor for good. They’ve never made it so far before. How is he supposed to do this alone?

“ Help…” he begs, then his voice rises into a yell, “ Help! _Please!_ ”

Windows open up high above him, and there is a flurry of movement nearby, people muttering among themselves. A whistle, as someone gets the attention of his neighbors. 

Nines rolls onto his back, fighting to stay awake. 

“ We _can’t_ call the cops..."

“ We have to, this one’s been stabbed!”

" It's safer if we call the guy who stitches up the Chromebikers."

“ Do you think he was snatched? If he was snatched and then dropped by a Skinjacker, then we gotta call the police-”

" No... it looks like he’s already been Threaded."

" He isn't gonna make it."

" Come on, hand me the phone.”

The last thing Nines hears before he blacks out is:

“ What’s wrong with him? What’s wrong with his _face_?”

Nines realizes he doesn’t know. 

He doesn't even know how his face looks like. 

Has his face always been Conrad's?

The lost child's? 

But how does that face look like now?

Years after the last time it saw its reflection?

_Can my face be different from that child's? Untarnished by the pain?_

No, Nines knows that's just wishful thinking.

He reaches out for Connor, trying to find his essence in the void within himself.

If only to have their fingers brush long enough for Connor to know " _I'm still here_ ". 

As Sixty's voice begins to recede along with the rest of his senses, Nines thinks to himself:

_I'm a thing. Hideous. Bloody. Broken._

_But at least we're... real._

_Both of us._

  
  



End file.
